


just like old times

by onceuponanevilangel



Category: Conviction (TV 2016)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, let's pretend i have some knowledge of the secret service
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 01:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8383102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponanevilangel/pseuds/onceuponanevilangel
Summary: 5 times Jackson was there for Hayes when no one else was and 1 time he wasn't.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I started this fic after episode 3 and then episode 4 happened, so this took a definite turn for the sad. So there's obvious spoilers for episode 4. Also, I did literally the basest research about the role of Secret Service agents in the lives of First Kids so there is some accuracy, but I can't promise very much. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy and if you liked, reviews are always nice too :)

1.

He was coming for her. She was backed up against a wall with nowhere to run. There was a single window high up above her, letting in a thin strip of pale light that glinted off the blades on his glove. She was frozen in place, unable to scream. He raised the blades high over her head and she squeezed her eyes shut just before –

Hayes jerked awake in a cold sweat, a silent scream caught in her throat and tears burning in her eyes. For a brief, disorienting moment, she struggled to figure out where she was, but after a few gulping breaths, she started to come back to herself.

She was in her room. She was all alone and Freddy Krueger was nowhere to be seen.

Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to watch that movie with Jackson right before bed.

Hayes rolled over to turn on the lamp next to her bed, but the motion knocked her stuffed wolf onto the floor and she stopped. She couldn’t sleep without him, but getting him back meant reaching down next to the empty space under her bed and there was definitely enough room for a monster or a serial killer to be hiding under there.

Just as she was trying to figure out what to do, she heard footsteps in the hallway that stopped in front of her door. The knob turned and Hayes squeaked in fright and pulled the covers up over her head as the door opened.

“Hayes?”

That didn’t sound like Freddy Krueger. Hayes dared to peek out from underneath the blanket and there was Jackson standing in her doorway.

“I thought I heard you moving around in here,” he said, stepping closer and sitting down on the end of her bed. “You were supposed to be asleep an hour ago. What are you still doing up?”

“I can’t,” Hayes said. “He tried to get me.”

“Who did?” Jackson asked.

Hayes’s eyes just widened and she shook her head.

“Oh God, is this about the movie?” Jackson asked. “Are you scared Freddy Krueger’s after you?”

Hayes nodded and Jackson bit back a laugh. She frowned and kicked his thigh.

“It’s not funny,” she snapped.

“You’re right. It’s not,” he said, but his lips were still twitching like he was trying not to smile. “I told you not to watch it with me.”

“And Mommy told you not to watch it at all,” Hayes countered.

“Yeah, but she also said that you had to be in bed by eight thirty,” Jackson said. “Should I tell her that you stayed up until ten instead?”

Hayes shook her head.

“Okay, then we’re good. Go to sleep.”

Jackson started to get up, but Hayes lunged forward and grabbed the hem of his shirt. “No! I can’t go back to sleep.”

“What?”

“Whenever I go to sleep I dream he’s coming to get me.”

“Would it help if I stayed her until you fell back asleep?”

Hayes nodded.

Jackson sat back down on the bed and leaned over to pick Hayes’s wolf up off the floor. She wrapped her arms around it and fell back against her pillows, scooting over a little bit to give Jackson a little more room. He stretched out next to her and she curled close to him.

It was quiet for a long moment but then she asked softly, “When are Mommy and Daddy coming home?”

“Soon,” Jackson replied. “And they promised to come say good night when they get home.”

“Do you think if Daddy’s really president then he and Mommy can stay home more?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson said. “But I hope so.”

“Me too,” Hayes breathed.

It was quiet for a long moment until finally Hayes’s breathing started to even out and she fell into a dreamless sleep with Jackson not far behind.

* * *

 

2.

The day of their father’s inauguration fell four days after Hayes’s eighth birthday and she was not at all happy about it.

She had gotten all dressed up only to have to sit still for what felt like an unreasonable amount of time in the cold breeze while her father was sworn in and gave his speech. After that, there was the parade to the White House that Hayes still wasn’t sure she wanted to call home and that was when the party began.

Most of the guests were the adults that had been in and out of Hayes’s life ever since her father had announced his campaign and they all seemed to think that just because they knew her name, they could talk to her, but whenever she tried to ignore them, her mother would grab her wrist a little too tight and smile a little too stiffly.

“Now Hayes, don’t be rude. Be a good girl and smile.”

Hayes offered a tight-lipped smile to the tall, faceless lady looking down at her. Her mother’s grip loosened and as soon as she looked away, Hayes took her opportunity to wriggle away from her and she disappeared into the crowd.

She kept toward the edges of the room, but she wasn’t quite quick enough to avoid Jackson’s gaze. He made his way through the throngs of people and slung an arm around her shoulder.

“Not enjoying the party?” he asked.

“It’s too loud in here and my shoes hurt and I want to go to bed,” Hayes declared.

“You know Mom probably won’t like that very much,” Jackson said.

“I don’t care,” Hayes said. Her lower lip was quivering and her nose was twitching like she was about to cry. “I want to go to bed.”

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Jackson asked. He set his glass of Sprite on the tray of a passing waiter and glanced around to make sure that no one was paying attention to them before he leaned down and put his hands on either side of Hayes’s face.

Maybe it was the feeling of her brother holding her steady or maybe it was just the first time that anyone had gotten on Hayes’s level all day, but either way, it was enough to make her start crying in earnest.

“Why don’t we get out of here for a little while, okay?” Jackson asked. He stood up and moved one hand to Hayes’s back, right between her shoulder blades. He took a quick look around again, but everyone seemed to be preoccupied with something else, so he gently nudged Hayes toward the door and they slipped out into the hallway.

“You two okay?”

Hayes whipped her head around to see two secret service agents, one on either side of the door, both of them looking down at Hayes and Jackson.

“Yeah. We’re just going to go sit in the hallway for a few minutes,” Jackson said.

The agents paused and looked at each other, before nodding down at the kids.

“Just don’t go too far, okay?” one of them said.

“Okay,” Jackson said. “Come on, Hayes.”

He led Hayes down the long hallway and they turned a corner into a small alcove with a marble bench that Jackson sat down on. Hayes scrambled up next to him and leaned back against the wall. She closed her eyes and though she had stopped crying, her breath was still coming in short gasps and her hands were trembling.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled.

“Nah, don’t apologize,” Jackson said flippantly. “That party was starting to get pretty boring anyway.”

Hayes opened her eyes and looked up at Jackson who gave her a tiny smile and squeezed her hand. “Don’t let her get to you, okay?”

Hayes swiped the back of her hand underneath her eyes and leaned against his chest. He rested his chin on top of her head and for that brief moment, Hayes forgot all about being a good girl in this fancy house that didn’t feel like home.

* * *

 

3.

The first time that Hayes’s father was caught cheating, it was a national scandal and a Morrison disaster.

Hayes could hear screaming and the sound of breaking glass coming from her parents’ bedroom and she padded down the hall to peek around the door. The first thing she saw was her mother sitting on the floor surrounded by shards of glass from the broken picture frames all around her.

“Mom?” Hayes asked quietly.

Her mother looked up and instantly, her face shifted into a tight smile.

“Hayes, sweetheart, what are you still doing up?”

“Why’s everything broken?” Hayes asked.

Instead of answering, her mother just stood up and moved a little closer, stepping over the broken glass and looking down at Hayes with what Hayes knew was her mother’s version of compassion.

“We’re doing an interview tomorrow afternoon. You’re going to wear your blue dress and I’ll send Tracy up after breakfast to do your hair.”

“Mom?” Hayes asked.

“That’s my good girl. Now get to bed, sweetheart.” Her mother leaned down and kissed the top of Hayes’s head before slowly shutting the door.

Hayes just stood there in the hallway for a long moment, unsure of what to do. She could hear her mother crying again and the sound of glass being swept across the floor, but she could tell that whatever was bothering her mother, she wasn’t supposed to hear about it.

So she did the next most logical thing she could think of and ran toward Jackson’s room.

As soon as she knocked on the door, Jackson opened it and Hayes could already tell that he wasn’t happy about something.

“What’s wrong with Mom?” she asked, hands on her hips and what she hoped was a stern expression on her face.

“You really don’t know?” he asked.

Hayes shook her head.

“Are you sure you _want_ to know?”

“We’re doing an interview tomorrow and I want to know why,” Hayes said. “Tell me.”

Jackson rolled his eyes and sighed, but he opened his door a little wider and let Hayes into his room.

Hayes always liked Jackson’s room. For a fifteen-year-old boy’s room, it was so much cleaner and more organized than her own and even the bed was neatly made every morning. Hayes took a little too much pleasure in throwing herself down on the immaculate sheets. Jackson just went over to his desk, grabbed a magazine off of it, and tossed it down on the bed next to Hayes.

“There you go,” he said, dropping back into his desk chair. “That’s what going on.”

Hayes propped herself up on her elbow and grabbed the magazine. There, taking up half of the page in all its glossy glory was a photograph of her father presenting a woman who was definitely not her mother with a pearl necklace that looked a little too nice to be just a present from a friend.

“That’s – “

“The wife of the French ambassador,” Jackson said. “She and Dad were caught together last week.”

“Dad’s cheating?” Hayes asked.

“That’s what they’re saying,” Jackson said.

Hayes threw the magazine at the wall and stood up.

“Are you okay?” Jackson asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Hayes said. But then her lip started to tremble and a few rebellious tears worked their way down her cheeks and suddenly she was crying.

Jackson got up and guided her back to the bed where he put his arms around her and let her lean her head against his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re gonna get through this, okay?”

“Promise?” Hayes sniffled.

“I promise.”

* * *

 

4.

The school nurse’s office was cold and smelled vaguely like cough drops and if Hayes felt sick before, she was pretty sure that being in that room was actually making it worse.

“Okay, sweetheart, I’m going to check and see if you have a fever.”

Hayes wasn’t entirely sure when the nurse had gotten there, but there she was with a thermometer in her hand. She stuck it in Hayes’s mouth and pressed the back of her hand gently against Hayes’s cheek. It was only a moment before the mercury in the thermometer settled and the nurse took it again and frowned.

“You’ve got a little bit of a fever, so I’m going to go see if we can’t get you home so that you can rest, okay, honey?”

She was thirteen. That was far too old to be called ‘sweetheart’ and ‘honey’ by some random nurse, but there was a small part of Hayes that actually liked the fact that this woman was paying attention to her when she felt so terrible. She nodded and fell back against the scratchy pillow on the cot as the nurse stepped into the hallway. Daniel, her secret service agent, was waiting out there and Hayes could hear them talking in hushed tones.

She knew better than to think that her parents would be home. Her father was in France negotiating some new international agreement and her mother was in New York drumming up support for a new bill that had something to do with health care. Not that that was anything new. Over the past five years, she had gotten pretty used to the fact that her parents were rarely around when she needed them.

She wasn’t sure when exactly she fell asleep, but the next thing she knew, she was waking up in her own bed and though the pounding in her head had receded a little bit, she still felt awful.

“Hey, you’re awake.”

Hayes looked up and blinked a few times to get her eyes to focus on the image of Jackson in the doorway with a mug in his hands.

“When did I get here?” Hayes asked, a little bit startled at how raspy her voice sounded.

“You don’t remember?” Jackson asked. “I mean, I’m not surprised. You were pretty out of it. I didn’t have school today, so I picked you up.” He made his way over to the side of her bed and set the mug down on her nightstand. “I’ll admit, I thought you were faking again until I saw you.”

“I don’t fake,” Hayes grumbled.

“Oh right. I must have imagined that time you drank soap to get out of Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I actually got sick from that,” Hayes corrected. “That was definitely not fake.”

“Whatever you want to call it, you’re still on bedrest for now,” Jackson said. “I called Mom and Dad. Neither of them are going to be back until at least tomorrow, but they said to tell you that they love you and they hope you feel better soon.”

“Wow, I can almost physically feel their love from here,” Hayes said drily.

“I know,” Jackson said. He sat down on the edge of Hayes’s bed and pressed the back of his hand against her cheek. “I think your fever’s getting a little better at least. I’ll have the kitchen make you some soup if you feel like eating?”

Hayes just shook her head and pulled the blankets up to her chin. “I’m just so tired.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Jackson said. “And that reminds me…” He trailed off as he turned around and grabbed something that Hayes couldn’t quite see off of her dresser. “I found this in a box in the spare room the other day. I brought it in while you were asleep. I don’t know if it’ll help, but…” He held out her old stuffed wolf and she bit back a gasp.

“You found it?!” she cried. “Give it to me.”

Jackson chuckled. “You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” Hayes said as she fell back against the pillows, tucking the wolf next to her chin and rubbing her finger over the worn patch on the fur. “You know, you’re a great brother.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Jackson said with smile of his own. “Now get some sleep.”

Hayes rolled over and made herself a little bit more comfortable in the big bed and as she listened to Jackson slip back out into the hallway, she was pretty sure that she felt better than if her mother had been there after all.

* * *

 

5.

It was dark and chilly and it felt like time was moving in slow motion. Hayes was curled up on the bench in a bus shelter, watching the rain pour down outside as she turned the broken pieces of her homecoming princess crown over and over in her shaking hands. She was dizzy, her head was spinning, and her heart felt like it was going to pound right out of her chest.

She could only imagine just how much trouble she’d be in when she finally got home – if she ever got home. Not that she was trying to think like that. She was going to be just fine and when she got home, she’d just shower and go to bed and hope beyond hope that her parent would be too busy to bother punishing her.

A pair of headlights turned onto the street and a car pulled up to the curb.

Jackson’s car.

Hayes scrambled to her feet and stumbled the few steps to the curb. Jackson leaned across the front seat to open the door for her and she practically fell into the passenger seat. She threw her crown on the floor and before she could do anything to stop it, she was crying.

Jackson didn’t say anything. He just looked straight ahead and kept driving until they got home. Once there, he helped her out of the car and kept an arm around her as he lead her towards her room.

“Jackson, I – “

He held up a hand to cut her off. “Don’t even try to talk right now. Just go shower, get changed, and you can meet me in the kitchen when you’re ready, okay?”

Hayes nodded and Jackson turned on his heel and headed out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Hayes managed to take herself through the motions of getting undressed and showering and by the time she got out, she was feeling a little bit better than she was before. That was to say that at least she no longer felt like throwing up every time she moved. Her head was still pounding and she was still trembling, but she managed to get her pajamas on and make her way down to the kitchen without incident.

Jackson was already waiting down there with two mugs of what smelled like hot cocoa on the island in front of him.

“Hail the conquering hero,” Jackson said when he saw her coming in.

“Don’t,” Hayes whined as she all but threw herself down on the stool next to him. The movement reverberated through her skull and she groaned as she gently laid her head on her hands.

After a moment, Jackson reached over and started rubbing between her shoulder blades.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I feel like such an idiot,” Hayes grumbled, her voice muffled by her hands.

“You’re not an idiot.”

“I got drunk at a senior homecoming party, I got groped by a creep, I ditched my Secret Service detail, and had to call from a bus stop pay phone to get you to come pick me up. So yeah, I think I’m kind of an idiot.”

“Look at me,” Jackson said.

Hayes lifted her head and blinked slowly until Jackson’s face finally swam into focus.

“You’re not an idiot,” he repeated, taking her hands and squeezing gently. “You are sixteen and sure, maybe you made a mistake, but at least you called. That was really smart.”

Hayes looked down at the counter. “I ditched my detail. Dad’s going to kill me.”

“No he won’t,” Jackson said. “Mom’ll probably ground you for a little while, but I think you’ll be okay.” He let go of her hands and slid her the untouched mug of cocoa. “I mean, you probably won’t be okay tomorrow. I’ll find you some pain meds and leave them in your room so you can take them when you need them.”

“Thanks,” Hayes said. She grabbed her mug and took a small sip, but it turned her stomach and she immediately pushed it away. “I think I’m just gonna go to bed though.”

Jackson nodded. “Sounds good. Get some sleep.”

Hayes pushed back her stool and stood up before making her way slowly towards the door.

“Hey, Hayes?”

She turned around a little too quickly and had to hold onto the doorframe to keep from falling over.

“I’m here if you want to talk about it at all.” He paused. “About any of it.”

Hayes didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded and turned back around to go to bed, feeling for the first time that night like maybe she wasn’t such an idiot after all.

* * *

 

+1.

The bed in the hotel room felt hard and it smelled like a different kind of fabric softener than Hayes was used to and it was almost enough to make her start crying again.

Almost.

She laid there on top of the comforter for a long moment, trying to ignore the stinging of her eyes and the dull pounding in her head that came from spending the better part of the last three hours in various stages of tears. She rolled over and was suddenly staring right at the olive tree that she had left on the floor by the dresser.

The tears started threatening to fall again, but she was distracted by the sudden buzzing of her phone where it was charging on the nightstand.

Hayes sat up and grabbed it, more than a little grateful for the distraction. She tapped the screen to find a text from Tess with a list of potential clients to start investigating tomorrow, but Hayes wasn’t in the mood.

There was nothing from Jackson. Hayes wasn’t sure how she felt about that yet. She had mostly convinced herself that she wanted nothing to do with him for the time being, but there was a tiny part of her that just wanted her big brother back.

She sighed and swung her legs over the side of the bed so she could get up. She had stopped by her building – her _old_ building, she had to remind herself – and grabbed one of her suitcases in the hopes that maybe Jackson had packed her a set of pajamas.

Hayes unzipped it and sure enough, right on top was her favorite set of pajamas. Maybe he did still love her deep down.

She grabbed them and started to turn away, but something caught her eye and she stopped and looked back down. There, half-hidden underneath one of her shirts, there was a fuzzy gray ear that looked oddly familiar. She grabbed it and pulled and suddenly she was looking down at her old stuffed wolf in her lap. A little worse for the wear, but it still looked almost exactly the same as it had when she had last seen it before she shoved it in a storage box before she left for college.

Hayes had no idea where Jackson had found it or why he was holding onto it, but it didn’t matter. She was already crying, hot tears sliding down her face, creating dark spots in the wolf’s light gray fur.

If things were normal, this was when Jackson would come up behind her, sink down next to her, and wrap his arms around her, holding her close like he could shield her from the entire world.

But Jackson wasn’t there and if recent events were any indication, he wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.

Hayes wiped the palm of her hand across her cheeks, but all she managed to do was smear her makeup. She gave up and tossed the wolf onto her bed while she fumbled her way blindly into her pajamas. She couldn’t even bother washing her face, even if it meant she’d be stuck with tacky eyes and smeared lipstick in the morning. She’d deal with it later.

She crawled onto the bed shimmied her way under the scratchy blanket grabbed the wolf again, pulling it close and running her fingers along the ear like she used to do when she was little.

There were still tears slipping down her cheeks and her headache was back in full force, but she didn’t even bother trying to stop. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to see her like this.

She wasn’t sure when exactly she fell asleep, but eventually she did, wishing with every bone in her body that she had her brother back.

Maybe he had been wrong. She really was an idiot after all.


End file.
